


when i'm gone, love me none

by wambsgangs



Series: tumblr crossposts [3]
Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:27:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28764783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wambsgangs/pseuds/wambsgangs
Summary: Before their world got blown to shit, they had slipped into this twisted sort of intimacy that he knew was fucked up and still craved anyway.That was what it was like, being friends with Tom. Like taking a designer drug with a really good body high, but when he crashed, he crashed really fucking hard.
Relationships: Greg Hirsch/Tom Wambsgans
Series: tumblr crossposts [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2109588
Comments: 9
Kudos: 32





	when i'm gone, love me none

The first thing that Greg noticed about Tom was the way that sadness clung to him like a pungent whiff of cheap cologne. He could try, and try, and _try_ to scrub it out of his pores but it was deeper than that. It seeped into his bloodstream. He might ooze pure, undiluted despair if he pricked his finger with a needle.

The second thing that Greg noticed? Tom was drunk. Swaying where he stood at the threshold of Greg’s apartment door, tie unknotted and hanging limply around his neck, and squinting blearily into Greg’s face like _he_ was the one being put out, and not the reverse.

“Dude, it’s three a.m.,” Greg yawned, taking in Tom’s rumpled form. “I don’t know if you think this is, like, the next stop on your one-man bar crawl, but it’s not. Just go home.” 

“Fuck off, Greg,” Tom slurred. “You can’t tell me what the fuck to do.” 

“Um. Technically, I can? Because I live here?” Greg frowned as Tom elbowed his way into the foyer. “And, um, I’m also kind of your boss now?” 

He tried not to waver under the sheer force of Tom’s glare. Pretty impressive, really, the way that the guy could manage to level him with a threatening look, even intoxicated and victim to a flipped power dynamic. 

“Don’t fucking remind me,” Tom grumbled, and he shoved half-heartedly at Greg’s shoulder before tottering over to the living room and sprawling himself over the couch arm in an undignified heap. 

Greg settled on the other end of the couch with an exasperated sigh. It was one thing being Drunk Tom’s babysitter after a night of drunken camaraderie, but this felt like a punishment. Or revenge. A _fuck you_ for squirreling away those documents and using them as leverage for the top job.

“Rough night?” Greg asked, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. God, he wished he’d never answered his phone. But he has taken to picking up calls in the middle of the night—after all, there’s no telling if it’ll be about Kendall. 

Tom raised his head from the couch cushions, hair mussed and sticking up at the ends. 

“No, Greg. It was a fantastic fucking night,” Tom bit back. “That’s why I’m here with you, instead of banging some hot girl in her studio apartment in SoHo.”

Greg sighed. “Yeah, okay.” 

“Fuck.” Tom flopped back onto the couch with a dramatic groan. “I need a drink.” 

“I think you’re good, actually,” Greg said, wrinkling his nose. He smelled like a distillery, eye-wateringly sharp with the scent of brown liquor and acrid sweat. “Look, do you want me to call you a cab, or—?”

“No.” 

He braved a look at Tom—glowering at the vaulted ceiling like it had personally offended him, arms crossed tight over his chest—and sighed again, softening a little. 

Greg didn’t have to pretend to be Tom’s therapist anymore. He wasn’t even sure that they were friends at this point. Something had broken between them after Kendall’s press conference—his fault, he knew, but he couldn’t fix this one. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t fix it.

You couldn’t help but notice his absence, Greg thought. Tom had made himself pretty much a constant, if not vaguely irritating, presence in his life, and in his wake, he left a ringing silence. The quiet weekend nights, the sparse inbox. A respite, a bit of room to breathe. 

But, _fuck._ He missed Tom more than he strictly should. It defied all logic, the way he felt a keen ache at the way Tom avoided his eyes in executive meetings, or the slump to his shoulders that Greg could see from a mile off. Granted, there was a lot that he _didn’t_ miss, but before their world got blown to shit, they had slipped into this twisted sort of intimacy that he knew was fucked up and still craved anyway. 

That was what it was like, being friends with Tom. Like taking a designer drug with a really good body high, but when he crashed, he crashed really fucking hard. 

“Hang on,” Greg said to Tom’s prone form, and got to his feet with a groan. He padded into the kitchen to fill a glass with tepid water from the faucet, grabbed a bottle of aspirin from an overhead cabinet and shook a couple of tablets into the palm of his hand. Just because he didn’t owe Tom a fucking thing anymore, that didn’t mean he had to shut off the instinct to be kind. 

Tom poked his head up when Greg sat on the edge of the coffee table, knees bumping up against the couch cushions. He accepted the pills and water with an eye-roll and eased up onto his elbows to gulp it down. Then he winced. 

“Tap water, Greg?” 

Greg frowned. “Yeah? What’s wrong with it?”

“Do you know how many dead bodies they fish out of the water in this fucking city?” Tom set the glass aside, pulling a face. “Ugh. Get a fucking Brita like a civilized human being.” 

Greg heaved another sigh. See, this was why he was better off without Tom. Couldn’t be nice to him without getting a sharp rebuke in return, a kick in the teeth. Guess this was his methadone. “Can you just please, like, not be a dick to me right now?” 

“Fuck you, Greg,” Tom snapped at him, forcing himself to sit up against the couch arm. “I’m having an awful fucking night.” 

“Yeah, well, it’s not going super well for me, either,” Greg told him. Sitting up in the middle of the night with his old boss who might be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. “What are you even doing here, man?” 

Tom glared at him. “I didn’t want to be alone.” 

“So, like.” Greg tilted his head. “You wanted to hang with me? I thought you fucking hated me.” 

“Maybe I didn’t have any other options.” Tom turned away, scowling. In the moonlight, his profile was exaggerated, a study in contrasts and shadows. He looked tired, worn. 

(Well, Greg always kind of thought that Tom looked vaguely like a weatherbeaten shelter dog. He reminded him of a pathetic old bloodhound who knew he was past his prime, maybe was self-aware enough to be embarrassed about it. But he used to be better about hiding his forlorn eyes from Greg.) 

It was kind of sad, seeing him laid low. Unmoored. He seemed like the codependent type, rudderless without Shiv’s guiding hand, leading him this way and that. But then again, Shiv didn’t seem to need Tom all that much in the short course of their marriage. Maybe codependent wasn’t the right word. Clingy? Scared?

“Hey,” Greg said softly, and Tom looked at him with those ice blue eyes that still sent a shiver down his spine, unfocused and glassy as they were at the moment. “I know we’re, like, not on great terms right now? But you can talk to me.” 

With a huff, Tom rolled onto his side, burying his face in the cushions. His voice came out sounding muffled. “No, thanks.” 

Wasn’t that just like Tom, to set the fucking parameters? It wasn’t even his apartment. 

Greg blew a frustrated breath out through his mouth and stood up. He felt jittery with Tom in close proximity. Not quite a contact high, but something close to it. He didn’t think his heart and lungs could take the heft of another hit. 

“Okay, well.” Greg smoothed his hands down over his flannels, brushing the wrinkles out of the knees. He shook his head at Tom’s hunched shoulders, his rigid spine. The dude wore his shame and repression like a goddamn suit of armor, you had to give him that. “See you in the morning, I guess.” 

Greg doubted that he’d be able to fall asleep, knowing that Tom was sleeping off a bender on his couch, but he ambled off toward his bedroom anyway. But he’d barely made it out of the living room when he heard a thin voice drifting up from the crevice between the cushions. 

“Wait.” 

His voice was a magnet. Greg couldn’t resist the pull that led him back to the couch, against his better judgment. He crouched to the floor, elbows stacked on his knees, and stared at the back of Tom’s neck. Wondered if he should do something stupid, like touch him. 

“Don’t leave me,” Tom said in a thick voice. “People leave me all the fucking time, Greg. I’m fucking tired of it.” 

“I’m here,” Greg soothed. He bit his lip at the pang of guilt that lanced his ribs. It felt like a pretty pointed accusation, but then again. Tom was drunk, maybe didn’t know what he was saying. A bald lie like this felt bad under the circumstances, but he didn’t feel up to fighting over something as stale as his document bait-and-switch. 

Tom rolled over, the movement so swift and unexpected that it almost sent Greg toppling back on his heels, but he steadied himself in time. Tom’s proud, Nubian nose prodded at Greg’s brow ridge. His breath fanned hotly over his face, sour with overindulgence. 

“How do you fucking stand it?” Tom murmured, almost going cross-eyed with the effort of trying to keep Greg’s face in focus. “Being alone.” 

“Uh.” Greg winced. He had half a mind to clap a hand over Tom’s mouth, stop him before he said something really self-incriminating and awful. It felt like an intrusion to even passively listen to him in this state. “I guess I’m used to it?” 

Always, without fail, there’s that tiny voice in the back of his head telling him that his solitude isn’t a lifestyle choice, but a necessary sacrifice. 

Tom draped an arm over his eyes. “I know how I look,” he said, mournful. “How people see me. Some rich prick in a suit, just a total fucking piece of shit. But the ring helped.” 

Greg stared at his bare left hand, where it dangled over the side of the couch. A valuable piece of real estate, that fourth finger. You could see how a pretty girl at the bar might look askance at a guy like Tom, in his forties and unattached. He cut a devastating figure with that leading man stature and those piercing eyes, but you might as well slap a foreclosure notice on that wide expanse of forehead. 

“You never know,” Greg told him. “Maybe you’ll meet someone.” 

The assurance rang false to his own ears, but he couldn’t really tell if he was just trying to placate Tom or… convince himself. Not that it mattered what he thought about Tom getting back out there, playing the field. It wasn’t like he had to worry about being around to see it all play out. 

“Oh, yeah?” Tom shifted onto an elbow, jutted his chin forward. His eyes looked murky. It scared Greg, a little, to peer into them and not be able to see the depths. “I’m a washed-up has-been in his forties, getting a divorce from Siobhan Roy. Who would touch me?” 

Greg held his breath. “I would.” He watched Tom process it, sift the suggestion through his gin-soaked brain. He ran his tongue over his bottom lip. Dared himself to finish the thought. “If you asked me to.” 

Tom’s face hardened, and Greg thought for a split second that he might actually die right there on the spot, either from undistilled humiliation or a death grip around his throat, but then Tom seized him by the chin and bruised his mouth with a kiss. Greg swallowed his surprise and leaned into it, rolled onto his knees and slid his hands into Tom’s hair, laced his fingers behind his head. He tasted liquor on his tongue. His veins sang at the slow trickle of poison into his bloodstream. Not a drug, after all—those he could metabolize and leach out of his system. Tom’s mouth on his was like nightshade, hemlock. Death from the moment it touched his lips. 

But then Tom’s mouth went slack, and Greg pulled away, panting hard. He stared at Tom, open-mouthed and horrified, but Tom just laughed. Bitter as the taste in the back of Greg’s throat. 

“Don’t bullshit me,” Tom said, rubbing at his slick lips with the back of his hand. “Keep saying shit like that and I’ll start to believe you.” 

Greg blinked. Tom settled his head onto his outstretched arm, tucking his chin into the crook of his elbow, and closed his eyes. 

He took a moment to collect himself, flipped the switch and hit reset. Good, old dependable Greg. Greg, the dutiful assistant. He fetched a wastebasket from the bathroom and set it on the floor by Tom’s head, refilled his water glass. Touched a tremulous hand to the plane between his shoulder blades before slipping off to bed and drawing out the poison with a tight fist and a gasp as the body high took full effect. 

If they talked about it in the morning, Greg was sure it might kill him. 

He lived to see another day.


End file.
